Stars
by chronikuru
Summary: There were a billion stars above him. He could not remember a single one. Keyshipping hints, Astral angst.


**[A/N] It is my firm belief that at the end of ZEXAL one of the Numbers cards will tell Astral how to get his body back and that he had one before he lost it to the Astral Plane. It is my pet theory that he was created as an artificial human by some evil mastermind and he's the personification of a computer somewhere or the Internet or a duel disk. Or he was created by Seto Kaiba, which is pretty much the same as the evil mastermind theory.**

**I actually really want 4kids to stop ripping off the nice people who make Yu-Gi-Oh!, dub this, and put it on every cartoon and/or kids network, because its popularity would probably shoot through the roof and I would have lots of Keyshipping fanfics to read. :)**

**Long author's note is long. Enjoy (hints of) my new OTP.**

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><p>There were a billion stars above him, all shining gently, looking down on the world with benevolent faces.<p>

They were all foreign to him.

_The hunter, the bear, the snake, the many-headed water demon, the bright star in the middle that always guided him home…_

_They had all been forgotten by time._

_Just like him._

He felt lost.

Every day there was something new, something that had never existed in his old life. What good were his memories when nothing that he remembered applied to this world?

_The past may affect the future, but the future will inevitably forget what had forged it, given it inspiration, given it life._

Where was his place in this new world?

He remembered great art, ancient relics, masterpieces, stories, life…

What had happened to all that?

_The world had moved on. Shouldn't he?_

"What are you doing up here?"

Ah, Yuma. Naïve, kind, brave, persistent Yuma. He remembered people like that, and he was the only one who did.

"Thinking."

Yuma sat beside him, reclining, relaxed. "Why think on the roof?"

"I was looking at the stars."

"Why? There's nothing special about them, really. They don't do anything."

_But they moved and died and watched millennia go by and _changed_._

"Some would disagree."

Yuma's face puckered slightly. "If you don't agree you can just say so, you know."

They lapsed into silence.

"So what were you thinking about?"

"The stars have moved since… back then."

Yuma looked at him carefully for a moment. "And you don't like that."

"No."

"Change is what makes life great! If nothing changed it would be boring!"

"But everything's changed. Why…" He hesitated, not sure whether to continue, "Why haven't I?"

"What?" Of course Yuma was confused.

"The whole world's different. I'm… I'm the only thing from back then. I'm a juxtaposition." _I don't belong. Why am I here?_

"You keep using big words," Yuma grumbled quietly. He sighed. "Not everything's different. It's still the same Earth. Lots of the stars are the same. We still have houses and cars and humans and dueling. Everything's just a bit mixed up."

He nodded once and continued to look at the stars. "It would be nice… if I knew what was different. How the stars were different."

Yuma twisted the hem of his shirt awkwardly. "My sister showed me a few constellations… I can show them to you, if you like."

"I would appreciate that."

Yuma moved closer to him and guided his hand to point to the brightest star. "That's the South Star. It pretty much points south."

_The North Star, always pointing north, always pointing towards home._

"And there's the dueler, and the snake monster he summons, and the evil dragon with lots of heads…" As he named them, he traced each on the sky with their intertwined hands.

_The hunter, the bear, the snake, the many-headed water demon, the bright star in the middle that had helped many find their way…_

_Maybe they hadn't been completely forgotten._

"You don't know many constellations, do you?"

"Shut up!" Yuma fumed, and blushed, and fell silent.

They never let go of each other's hands.

_There were a billion stars above him, looking down on the world with radiant faces._

_The sky didn't seem so alien anymore._

"Yuma?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."


End file.
